The invention relates to the technical sector of machines for filling tubes, that is rigid cylindrical containers, with piles of disc-shaped articles, in particular pills.
The prior art describes a similar typology of machines comprising: a conveyor belt, which draws pills towards a loading station; a transporter organ, overlying the conveyor belt, which bears empty tubes oriented vertically and with an opening thereof arranged downwards, respectively through the loading station and towards a capping station; the loading station, which comprises two vertically-developing archimedes screws located near to one another arranged in proximity of opposite sides of the conveyor belt at a relative transversal loading section, being activated in counter-rotation to one another in order to intercept, on opposite sides thereof, the pills coming from the section, to raise the pills vertically and push them internally of a corresponding overlying tube, stationary and waiting; and the capping station, in which the capping of the tubes filled with a given number of pills is performed. The conveyor belt, the conveyor organ and the archimedes screws are activated in phase relation to one another, and intermittently, to enable insertion of the pills internally of each tube halted in turn at the loading station.